Stimulus money creates local jobs

Dozens of "full-time-equivalent" positions have been created on the Cape and Islands through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but not all the hires have been local.

MARY ANN BRAGG

For Gilbert Pires, the flagman job on Route 6A in Dennis has meant the difference between subsisting on a $157-a-week unemployment check and holding a well-paying job.

Pires, who lives in New Bedford, is one of two new people hired by Lawrence-Lynch Corp. of Falmouth for Cape road repair projects under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

"It means a lot because I was laid off," said Pires, who now earns $18.50 an hour, four or five days a week, depending on weather. He was hired by Lawrence-Lynch through his union, after taking a traffic-flagging class.

Pires' job is one of at least 46 created on the Cape and Islands under the Recovery Act, according to www.recovery.gov, the official government Web site established under the act to report how its $787 billion is being spent. The Cape and Islands Workforce Investment Board, the regional nonprofit that oversees publicly funded education and training programs, estimates the regional work force at about 157,000.

The data show that jobs are being created and retained here, but determining exactly how many, where they exist, and who holds them is a challenge, based on a review of the data by the Cape Cod Times.

Those 46 or so jobs are a mix of permanent and temporary hires, union and nonunion, and full-time and part-time, and are held by both Cape and Islands residents and those from off-Cape, according to the Web site and spokesmen for local companies and agencies.

The first set of national job creation and job retention figures were released in late October and include data through Sept. 30 as reported by the public and nonprofit agencies and companies that have received money.

Nationally, a total of 640,329 full-time-equivalent jobs were created or retained through the end of September, according to the federal Web site. For Massachusetts that has meant 8,792 full-time-equivalent jobs, according to the Massachusetts Recovery and Investment Office, which tracks the funds in this state.

The government requires that all jobs be quantified as full-time equivalents, a formula that relies on actual hours worked and the number of full-time hours in a typical work week rather than the number of individuals at work.

Questions have been raised nationally about the data's accuracy, including by OMB Watch, a national nonprofit that promotes public access to government data.

The job numbers are "rife with errors," according to OMB Watch. Job narratives did not match with job creation numbers, job numbers were inconsistent among similar projects and summarized data made it difficult to pin down specific locations, according to the nonprofit.

Cape and Island legislators also question whether the cost of 46 or so local jobs outweighs the benefits and how much the region is really gaining.

"Forty-six people are working, but I have to ask, what did it cost us to get 46 jobs?" said Rep. Jeffrey Perry, R-Sandwich. "If you're going to tell us it cost $100 million to get the jobs, that doesn't seem like it's the appropriate expenditure."

Sen. Robert O'Leary, D-Barnstable, said it was difficult to comment on the numbers, given the uncertainty about accuracy. But he questioned whether at least one Recovery Act project — the repair of the Sagamore Bridge in Bourne — has not cost more jobs than it created.

"I think the time it's taking and the poor planning leading up to it probably had more of a negative effect than a positive effect," O'Leary said. "On the other side, what you're probably not seeing is that we weren't required to make the kind of (local) cuts we were going to have to make in education."

The real issue is that local companies aren't getting much of the money, said David Augustinho, executive director of the work force board. "Because of the size of the projects, most of the bidders are from off-Cape," he said.

Those who have been hired locally or whose jobs have been retained include not only construction workers but nine full-time-equivalent scientists and researchers and an operations manager working at Woods Hole science organizations, two full-time nurses at Duffy Health Center in Hyannis, a full-time medical assistant and full-time physician at Outer Cape Health Services in Wellfleet, seven house renovators in Aquinnah, and others, according to www.recovery.gov.

Wages for Recovery Act construction jobs must match regional prevailing wages, but there are no requirements that jobs go to union or nonunion employees, said Jeffrey Simon of the Massachusetts Recovery and Investment Office.

"So far I've added one person to my payroll," said Brown Building Co. owner Doug Brown of East Falmouth, whose company has been hired to build 45 bus shelters for the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority.

That full-time permanent worker lives on the Upper Cape and is helping to frame, roof and install siding and trim work on the shelters at Brown's shop in the Falmouth Industrial Park, Brown said.

Some companies are relying on existing union agreements to make their hires. Lawrence-Lynch, for example, is working on three Recovery Act paving jobs on the Cape: two resurfacing jobs totaling $4.7 million on Route 6A in Dennis and Barnstable, and a $1.7 million paving job on the Province Lands Bike Trail in the Cape Cod National Seashore in Provincetown.

The company has about 10 union employees working on the jobs, and is using another 10 union workers for trucking, said owner Christopher Lynch. Of that, two have been added because of the Recovery Act. Both live in the New Bedford area.

The $5.5 million Sagamore Bridge renovation project — of which $3.5 million is Recovery Act money — has generated about 25 short-term jobs for union employees, said David Zoppo, co-owner of R. Zoppo Corp. of Stoughton. The work is primarily manual labor, such as concrete demolition, and the workers were hired from Construction and General Laborers Local Union 385 in Fairhaven, Zoppo said.

There are no labor unions headquartered regionally on the Cape, but union halls in the New Bedford area serve union members in Southeastern Massachusetts including the Cape, said Augustinho.

"We are using and retaining local people that we've had for years, and we've added to our labor force," said Lynch. The people working on the job live on Cape Cod and throughout Southeastern Massachusetts, he said.

The jobs have health benefits as well as pensions. "For us, it's very easy. We've probably saved 10 percent of our work force," Lynch said.

Some off-Cape companies hired for recovery projects have their own employees from off-Cape.

Smart LLC of Chelsea was awarded a $125,000 contract with the Cape Cod National Seashore to install backup generators at the Race Point ranger station in Province-

town and the Highland Light in North Truro. The company has 12 full-time, permanent employees, including the owners, said company spokesmen. All workers are from Eastern Massachusetts, but none is from the Cape, said company co-owner Scott Cullinane.

Likewise, Dandel Construction of Rockland, which has a $45,000 contract to connect an Army Corps of Engineers administration building in Buzzards Bay to a town sewer system, isn't hiring anyone new for the work, said company owner Daniel DelPrete. But he will be able to retain his five full-time permanent employees, all from the South Shore, a few weeks longer.

"It's two weeks worth of work for us," DelPrete said. "It was a very well-placed job. It's been a very slow season."

Seven Martha's Vineyard residents have jobs working on a $185,000 house rehabilitation project at the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribal Housing Authority, said housing administrator Jennie Greene. The low bidder was a Vineyard Haven company that had recently laid off workers and was able to rehire them for the three-month project, Greene said. "It's keeping islanders employed," she said.

At the Duffy Health Center in Hyannis, which serves the homeless and those at risk of homelessness, four full-time, permanent jobs have been created, said executive director Claire Goyer. The new employees — a nurse practitioner, a registered nurse, an administrator and an information technology specialist — all live on the Cape, she said.

Registered nurse Erika Birch of Centerville was hired in July after working as a nurse's aide for four years while attending college. Birch is a single mother with a 2-year-old son.

"It's been huge for me," she said. "I worked my way through school. I can now pay for his preschool. I can do a lot. His life is much better now that I'm working here."

And at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, former Hawaii resident and research engineer Breeze Simmons has been hired as a full-time permanent operations and maintenance manager for the agency's $385 million Ocean Observatories Initiative. Simmons, who has moved to Woods Hole, started work in early November, after a career in the Navy and then in information technology.